


Healed Hearts

by hrhrionastar



Series: The Honeyverse [14]
Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Episode: s01e22 Reckoning, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-23
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 14:12:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kahlan resists compassion for her husband as long as she can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Healed Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning** : coerced marriage, non-graphic violence, illness
> 
> Written for the Legendland Marathon Challenge for the prompt _D/K, forgiveness._

_"Forgiveness is an act of compassion. It's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it." -Rupert Giles (from **Buffy the Vampire Slayer** )_  
  
Kahlan can't say the exact moment that she forgives Darken Rahl.  
  
Even if she could, she wouldn't, of course. It's not as though, after everything he's done—invading her homeland, killing her sister, costing her Richard in a fiery explosion of magic that sent him half a century into the future, coercing her into marriage—that he could ever possibly either earn or deserve her forgiveness.  
  
But she is not made of stone, no matter how much she tries to remain unmoved.  
  
Perhaps the ice around her heart begins to melt when she learns that Richard and Darken are brothers. She doesn't doubt it, even for a second. Their kinship explains so much of the similarity she both wants and doesn't want to see. And it hurts something in her to think of siblings set so cruelly against each other.  
  
Or perhaps it is the moment that Darken places infant Nicholas in Kahlan's arms. She loves her son even when she believes that he must die because of the evil and destruction he will bring upon the world. His life is a gift, and one that she and Darken have created together.  
  
A few days later Kahlan and Darken stand on opposite sides of the cradle where Nicholas sleeps, and the tenderness on her husband's face shocks Kahlan. Darken looks up at her. "If you harm him, I'll kill you," he promises, and a secret savage part of Kahlan rejoices that her son has such a strong protector.  
  
But Kahlan can't forgive someone she's been taught to see only as a monster and not a man. Not a _person_.  
  
The prophecy says that the Seeker will defeat Darken Rahl, and without Richard Kahlan doesn't believe any words or action of hers can possibly harm the tyrant lord of D'Hara. He is invulnerable, invincible. Only her suffering is real.  
  
So Kahlan believes. Until an assassin's poisoned arrow almost takes her husband from her forever.  
  
Seeing Darken so weak touches Kahlan and terrifies her. The Sword of Truth is not the only weapon that may slay her husband. He is insufferable, wicked, often mistaken, infuriating—and mortal.  
  
Kahlan can no longer even try to keep hatred alive.  
  
She whispers her forgiveness into Darken's blankets while he sleeps, praying for his safe deliverance from poison and fever. Her heart is no longer ice.  



End file.
